You’ll be surprised how many Star Wars games got canned in the last two years. I can’t really say because of NDAs and don’t want anyone in trouble. The whole industry is in trouble.
Yeah I’ll not be buying this then.
Live by the AAA die by the AAA
I gave it the 2 hour test run on Linux and I get getting blackscreens and stutter so unfortunately it went to refund town.
I think we’re approaching a point where games are going to be made like movies.
Teams assembled for one project, everyone does their bit, and are then discarded when they’re no longer needed.
Big publishers will probably have a pool of people they can push between projects depending on what’s needed. Ubisoft appear to do that, when you look at the credits in their games, there’s like 10 subsidiary studios involved. For smaller studios, you’ll probably be let go between games until you’re needed again. Maybe they’ll keep your information and rehire you because you did a good job of hard surface rigging or whatever last time. Maybe they hire an excited school-leaver to sloperate a clanker. Who knows.
Major difference is that in Hollywood, you don’t hire a bunch of, say, VFX artists for a movie, you contract the company that retains them. They’ll generally still have jobs when the movie is over. It’s mostly just the cast, director and writers that work on a per-project basis. Games industry is somehow worse than Hollywood.
A lot of them do seem to do that. The credits for most games are ludicrously long and thank dozens of subcontracted companies.
I honestly don’t think your average AAA studio could even tell you how much AI slop is in their final product. It’s not none, and hasn’t been for years.
Approaching?
AAA has been following that model for a decade.
They don’t give a shit about the people that work for them and fire them as soon as it’s convenient.
They fire people and allow them to re-apply for their job because then they don’t have to pay continued service rewards.
deleted by creator
“Congratulations. Great job. Goodbye now.”
Gamerant is saying the studio was low on funds and facing a $20 million dollar lawsuit from a former exec when the workers were furloughed weeks prior to launch, that dozens of employees have already been brought back, and that Bit Locker is claiming to want to bring the rest back.
This was their first game, and if they do bring back the team members (with back pay) now that the game is a sucess, I would actually be much more understanding.
Unions. Not just for blue collars anymore.
All devs should be entitled to royalties
Honestly, I don’t understand why any studio wouldn’t do this. Not only does it mean you can differ some pay until later effectively (obviously you still need to be competitive, because people don’t like gambling with their livelihood), but it actively encourages devs to make the best game possible. If they’re just working for a salary, they have no skin in the game. Give them a reason to make the absolute best thing they possibly can make.
Hollywood perfected royalties. If structured right, you can promise everyone at the company 200% of the games profit and never pay them a cent.
For example, you sell all rights to the game to a shell company owned by the studio’s parent for 1¢.
But what about the moneyyyyyyyyy?
This all sounds nice but isn’t the case in any other industry, why should game dev be different?
I made a statement on what they should do, for best results from employees, not on what they actually do. It should also be true for all other industries. I think all company profits should be shared with employees, and ideally owned, if not totally then at least in part, by employees. Give them a stake in the company, and a reason to care about how it’s doing, and they’ll put more effort in.
The fact this is incomprehensible to the capitalist class isn’t surprising though. They view humans as resources (hence the Human Resources Department), not as people with their own wants and desires.
Yet another certified bruh moment,
The devs keep getting stabbed in the back by evil greedy CEOs
I won’t even buy the game then
This is why I pirate most games unless it’s from indie devs. Fuck any and every corpo entity. Like hell I’m gonna let them profit from me while stabbing those who actually did the work in the back.
He went on: "It is a gross but all too common sight to see, another corporate game hitting the top of Steam while the team is left looking for work and cut off from any possible profit sharing.
And, there it is.
What’s the point? You can’t even enjoy your laurels. Just fucked the minute release hits so they dont have to pay you. Fucked up. Nobody should work for a game corporation.
Nobody should work for a
gamecorporation.My actual goal, anymore.
I was considering buying this as a massive fan of XCOM 2.
Was.
I’ll just keep playing Cyber Knights: Flashpoint thank you very much.
Check out Xenonauts 2. It’s positioned as a spiritual sequel of classic X-COM, rather than modern XCOM, though so there are differences.
Probably the best difference, and I don’t understand why modern XCOM did this, is classic and Xenonauts have larger squad sizes. This is huge, because the entire genre is about gambling on actions. If you only have four actions, taking a 50% shot, but potentially being in danger, is an issue. If you have 8+ actions (8 squad members minimum, and you’ll often get multiple actions per member), a 50% shot is a lot less risky. It’s more about setting yourself up to get many attacks, rather than one perfect attack. There’s a lot more opportunities to mitigate risk.
It also has a much stronger strategic game, which I feel is largely lacking in modern XCOM. It’s all about tactical battles. This game, in particular, I think is almost entirely tactical battles, with little strategic opportunity, and no strategic layer IIRC.
Loved xcom ufo defense. Didn’t even bother with the newer games because of the squad size. Xenonaughts is a great recommendation, thanks for being here for us all.
This whole industry is job security hell. Man, people decades ago dreamed of being somewhere in the industry. I don’t really know now who’d want to be in it knowing how awful job security even is.
Yeah, I went to school for it. Never broke in. Ended up with a much better and wayyyy more stable job.
Couldn’t imagine trying to get in now that every studio is owned by like ~3 companies.
It’s like the movie industry, now. They only have a job as long as the game is in production, and all they get is the weekly paycheck.
Except they’re not set up to be able to do that like the movie industry is.
Sounds like a problem for the devs right everyone?
When I was a teenager, I really wanted to work in the video game industry. Really glad I don’t. I still want to learn to make video games, but I never want to work for any video game company. Especially any that have been around for say… 20 years and/or publicly traded.
Unfortunately, you’re not the demographic the industry is looking for. What they want now is obedient, but expendable staff who’ll only be on long enough to see a project done. Then you’re discarded. The other pocket of people they’d want is, you know what type.
You’re better of being your own independent video game worker.
The unfortunate reality of it now, like having to keep your CV constantly updated and ready if ever to be laid off at any time. And it’s worse than ever.
